Excellent article from John Tusa of the Barbican Centre:
“If the government is truly serious about the arts, it would first restore the Olympic theft. Then it would aim to keep up arts funding overall in real terms as the base of the next three-year settlement. Only then should it start to consider what extra new money it should put into the arts to showcase to the whole world how healthy, vibrant, vigorous, original, creative and dynamic the national arts scene is.
To do so requires some big ideas. Here are a few. Set the arts world the challenge of commissioning, for performance in 2012, new works in all its major fields. We deserve a 2012 portfolio of works that will be looked back on as artistic landmarks – the next great British opera, drama, sculpture, installation, public event, painting, novel, film, TV drama, TV documentary, exhibition. That would be worth funding. It would create a true legacy. It would stimulate the run-up to the legacy, the ‘pre-legacy’ as the cant has it.”
A Cultural Olympiad? Great idea – now give us the money
Category Archives: Britain
Why the UK should never have an ID Card or joined-up databases
“The roll call of banks, retailers, government departments, public bodies and other organisations which have admitted serious security lapses is frankly horrifying,” said Mr Thomas.
This was on the front page of the Age online: Divided in sport, united in love
First they played against each other, then they fell in love. Now two of the world’s greatest women hockey players have had a baby together.
That’s the story of Australian Olympian Alyson Annan and her partner, former Olympic rival Carole Thate.
It’s a charming story, and it’s a great balance to Howard’s homophobia which at this distance otherwise forms my opinion of Australia’s attitude to all things gay.
Oh, and al-Qaeda can go fcuk themselves.
London is turning into Melbourne – it was beautiful and sunny this morning, and I was even going to venture from my desk and go to the park at lunchtime, but we’ve just had a massive downpour.
I never particularly liked the ‘four seasons in one day’ thing in Melbourne and don’t want it over here too!
(I could also do without hayfever, ta)
So the biggest issues in the news this week are the new London 2012 Olympic logo (which has also been blamed for triggering epileptic seizures; and ‘is gingerism as bad as racism?’.
Susan Sontag tribute
Last night I went to the Susan Sontag tribute at the ICA. It was an inspirational evening. The tribute made me realise how badly we need essayists who can crystallise ideas that remain troublesome but cloudy for the rest of us, and form a focus for effective agitation or action for change.
How to annoy your workmates
A kitchen conversation, earlier today:
Guy from Finance: did you celebrate on the weekend when Australia won the cricket?
Me: Oh, I don’t bother celebrating, we’re always winning one thing or another.
The Bubble
I would review the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival shorts ‘Trouble and Strife’ but owing to a mix-up with daylight savings (i.e. I forgot) I missed the session. I had a lovely time catching up with people in the new back cafe at the NFT so I can’t really complain.
The Bubble
I really, really recommend this film. It’s set in Tel Aviv (and made me want to visit, except that the politics make it kinda complicated), and is basically a love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian guy. That’s not all it is, obviously because of the religious, historical and political issues, but also because it’s firmly grounded in the everyday lives of a group of friends who are figuring out who and what they want to be while enjoying the best and coolest life Tel Aviv has to offer. The ‘bubble’ refers to life in Tel Aviv compared to the rest of Israel, but I think it could also refer to that stage of life where you and everyone you know are young and beautiful and life is relatively uncomplicated.
To me, the depictions of Israeli/Palestinian relations seemed fair, but really I can’t judge. It certainly gave me a more concrete understanding of what life might have been like for those ‘mad Israeli kids’ you meet backpacking when they’ve finished their military service, and the Palestinian issues with checkpoints were well portrayed.
(And the chick who plays Lulu is hot.)
Puccini for Beginners
Another LLGFF review:
Mia Minke
Puccini for Beginners
Puccini for Beginners was quite slick, well played, well written and very New York but overall it was strangely unsatisfying. It might just be that I expect more radical content or film-making from festival films, because if I was to see it at my local cinema it would be a lovely date movie. On the other hand maybe I’m spoilt because for the people I know there’s not much that’s shocking about a lesbian falling for a man.
It’s still nice to see a positive representation of queer life on the screen, and I particularly liked the scenes where passing characters broke out of role to engage with the main character’s internal dialogue.
It felt weirdly transgressive watching heterosexual sex in a cinema full of queer at a Lesbian and Gay film festival.
After a week of sunshine it’s back to being cold again and it snowed a bit on Monday and Tuesday. We’ve solved the problem of the lack of heating in the office with a new program of spontaneous Aboriginal Morris dancing.
Ok, quick film review. I’m trying out the hreview microformat at the same time.
Itty Bitty Titty Committee
Itty Bitty Titty Committee opened the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival last night. It was an entertaining start to the festival – cute cast, good production values and cinematography, great soundtrack. There was an occasional clunky “here’s the politics” but it wasn’t so bad that it pulled you out of the experience. It’s definitely not a coming out film and I really enjoyed the way being a lesbian was normalised – it wasn’t an issue in scenes set in a family or work environment.